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Sam and Friends BookWhich is why I don't quite care for 80's Era Nick. Some of the shows on the network that they reran were always available on local syndication. Inspector Gadget especially, though I swear there was a brief period where they stopped airing it because it was on Nickelodeon. I think Nick may have run the 1985 season more frequently, but I'm not sure. I do remember watching an episode on Nick that was grainier than usual (a trademark of the second season due to a new animation outsource that wasn't in their usual season 1 outsources).
I've been downing the anime selections on the 80's channel a lot this thread, but the one thing I don't think modern anime fans really get is the fact that these things used to be cheap filler. Well, with the exception of stuff like Robotech, Voltron, and the like which were at least motivated by toy sales and became something more of themselves than the cute animals stuff Nick was buying (I'm guessing from Saban back when it wasn't a media empire). There's that whole East/West difference of values thing that kept certain shows out of here, unless they were cut relentlessly. Something that was common practice no one complained about then, vs the never shutting up about what 4Kids did to One Piece today.
That's what made the Nick anime airings unique by today's standards, but commonplace back then. A small start up indie company could just buy up rights to unpopular shows like "Fushigina Koala Blinky," a minor 26 episode series made only to cash in off of the popularity of a zoo aquisition, and turn it into Noozels which ran far longer in the US than it did over there. And not just TV companies. There were also companies that bought up entire series only to chop them the heck up and release them as a stand-a-lone movie on cheap VHS. Far removed from the norm ever since the 90's, where rights were far harder to get, companies fought bidding wars, and even Japanese animation studios unloading failures not even top distribution and dubbing companies wanted as the only way to get prized and or marketable series. Sometimes they even manage to get the rights before a show is in production. A long way from the cheap filler programming and VHS movies from the 80's.
I find it funny Nick had a policy of not picking up anime during the late 90's-mid '00's boom, yet they had so many of these little cheap-o filler shows back then. Even now, Nicktoons has anime, but mostly of the toy commercial for 8 year olds variety. They had Dragon Ball Kai and GT when the Kai episodes ran out. That's the most sophisticated classic series they had.
I've been downing the anime selections on the 80's channel a lot this thread, but the one thing I don't think modern anime fans really get is the fact that these things used to be cheap filler. Well, with the exception of stuff like Robotech, Voltron, and the like which were at least motivated by toy sales and became something more of themselves than the cute animals stuff Nick was buying (I'm guessing from Saban back when it wasn't a media empire). There's that whole East/West difference of values thing that kept certain shows out of here, unless they were cut relentlessly. Something that was common practice no one complained about then, vs the never shutting up about what 4Kids did to One Piece today.
That's what made the Nick anime airings unique by today's standards, but commonplace back then. A small start up indie company could just buy up rights to unpopular shows like "Fushigina Koala Blinky," a minor 26 episode series made only to cash in off of the popularity of a zoo aquisition, and turn it into Noozels which ran far longer in the US than it did over there. And not just TV companies. There were also companies that bought up entire series only to chop them the heck up and release them as a stand-a-lone movie on cheap VHS. Far removed from the norm ever since the 90's, where rights were far harder to get, companies fought bidding wars, and even Japanese animation studios unloading failures not even top distribution and dubbing companies wanted as the only way to get prized and or marketable series. Sometimes they even manage to get the rights before a show is in production. A long way from the cheap filler programming and VHS movies from the 80's.
I find it funny Nick had a policy of not picking up anime during the late 90's-mid '00's boom, yet they had so many of these little cheap-o filler shows back then. Even now, Nicktoons has anime, but mostly of the toy commercial for 8 year olds variety. They had Dragon Ball Kai and GT when the Kai episodes ran out. That's the most sophisticated classic series they had.
